First of all, in case you haven't already heard about this: Cheeseh has recently released version 1.01 of the RCBot (a computer-controlled virtual player), with support for Sven Co-op! It's perfect for testing Sven Co-op maps off-line and such. The bots will heal you, recognize friendly monsters, etc. etc.

You can grab the files from RCBot.net... remember to read the instructions!

The video I mentioned earlier is now available... it ended up as more of a general preview than a specific feature demonstration, though. Thanks to SpaceMonster, BlueYonder Games, and Game.net for providing mirrors!

Alien Slaves can now revive their fallen comrades. Revived creatures' max health is set to half their previous max health.

New physics system for dropped weapons. This is only shown briefly... the new system is actually a lot more fun than it looks. You can play "catch" with a grenade, or flip your crowbar into the air and grab it on the way down.

All humans and some aliens (slaves, grunts) can now take and release control of controllable turrets at will.

As you may have noticed, we've been having some problems with our domain name over the last few days. It's in the process of correcting itself at the moment... some people will be able to see the site again sooner than others, depending on when their DNS servers update.

We'll try to arrange some sort of content release soon to celebrate the site working and all... we're pretty busy trying to finish everything off, though, and the site problems haven't helped matters. For one thing, much of our communication and all beta testing relies on the Sven Co-op forums. For another, SvenCoop.com E-mail has been down, causing all kinds of confusion (If you sent an E-mail to an @svencoop.com address recently and received no reply, please re-send the message).

Still, I think 3.0 will be worth the wait... there are a lot of fun things in there, some of which haven't even been announced yet. Here's information on one of them:

If you didn't see Sven Co-op screenshots posted on PHL recently, here they are (left). As mentioned in their news post, the shots were taken on the new version of the ToonRun map. What they didn't mention is that they also show off our new player animations.

As well as allowing player models to hold the akimbo Uzis/sniper rifle/etc. correctly, this means that you can now see other players reloading their weapons, or watch yourself reload in third-person. So now you can see when your teammates are reloading and give them some cover 'til they're finished, etc.

I managed to get hold of Erik Johnson recently to ask him how things were going with the Sven Co-op/Steam crash. He said they were running through a lot of mod issues at the moment, and should be finished by the end of this week... so hopefully that'll work out.

There is a temporary solution to the crash, by the way, but it's certainly not ideal. By renaming your SvenCoop\cl_dlls\client.dll file (after copying the SvenCoop\ folder over to Steam's Half-Life directory), you can play SC2.1 in Steam, but none of SvenCo-op's client-side code will be in effect. This causes a lot of problems, such as Uzis having no sounds/visual effects, and vote menus not working. Hopefully sometime next week Steam will be fixed, and nobody will need to bother with any of this.

Firstly, the bad news: If you haven't already noticed, there's a bug in Steam which causes Sven Co-op to crash on loading (as well as a few other mods). I've talked to Erik Johnson, and he says Valve will see about fixing this. For now, you can still use Half-Life v1.1.1.0 to play Sven Co-op. To leave Half-Life intact when upgrading to Steam, just choose not to 'clean up old files' when prompted during installation.

Other than the above, things have been going pretty well. We've just fixed the one major bug that was causing us trouble, putting us very close to completing 3.0. In the meantime, here's some information on a previously unannounced feature: Monster riding. In 3.0, if you can somehow manage to jump onto a monster's back, when the monster runs off after another player or such, you will move with the monster -- essentially riding upon its back.

This allows for some interesting stuff. For example, you might be standing on a ledge and notice a monster chasing some of your allies. You leap down onto the monster's back and repeatedly bash it with your crowbar. Another possibility would be riding around on a friendly Bullsquid's back while it chased after enemies, or you could have another player lead the Bullsquid around like a pack mule. It's a lot of fun :).

Our new weapon dropping system is a lot of fun, too... I've spent ages just playing around with it :). It really can't be described, though... you have to see it. Hopefully we'll have time to make up a demonstration video sometime soon.

The beta has been running pretty smoothly... a lot of bugs have been found, and about half of them have been fixed already. Hopefully it should be too much longer before you have your hands on the mod. The new maps coming with v3.0 are really good, by the way! Some of them really surprised me. Here are a few screenshots taken by the testers:

Important message for donors: As you may have heard, Valve will soon be replacing Half-Life's WON ID system with Steam IDs. Players will be assigned a Steam ID when they first log in to Steam (Half-Life will be integrated into Steam when the next Half-Life update is released... you'll be able to get a Steam ID before then by downloading the commercial Steam installer when it's released on Wednesday, and creating an account).

This will mean the WON IDs that we've collected will be rendered useless... we'll need to contact all existing donors to check their Steam IDs. Don't start contacting me about it yet, though, thanks... any current Steam IDs will be wiped once Steam leaves beta, anyway. Just keep watching the Sven Co-op site for further information. Once the new version of Steam is online and everything is sorted out on our end, I'll post instructions.

Commando made up a couple of images to demonstrate the detail of the new HIT OpFor grunts. The top image shows a comparison to the original model used in Opposing Force, and the bottom image is a comparison to the grunt model included with the Blue Shift HD pack. These high-definition grunts are so detailed that they even have working eyelids... Click Herefor a screenshot of some of the other grunt types, as well as more information on the high-definition models being created exclusively for Sven Co-op by the Half-Life Improvement Team.

Afraid I'll be leaving in the morning... should be back in three days. I'll see you then. -Sven

Many of you thought it might never happen, but yes. This IS a news update, and a damn good one too.

Sven has been busy preparing Sven Co-op 3.0 Beta over the past month and hasn't had the time to think about the news. All today he's been busy packing files and uploading stuff, so now he needs to sleep. So I offered to do a news update and here I am.

As we're close to releasing the beta, I'm happy to announce what the new weapons in Sven Co-op 3.0 will be. They are the previously announced M134 Minigun, the Opposing Force M40a1 Sniper Rifle and the Opposing Force Barnacle Grapple!

While many of you will moan that the Nomad Sniper rifle is not in this version, we feel that the addition of the M40a1 Sniper Rifle will make up for this.

If you wish to read more about these weapons and how they work, why not check out the first version of the Sven Co-op Beta 3.0 manual. Located right here:

The manual covers the monsters in Sven Co-op, the new weapons and the new HD models. It is the one that will be used by the Beta Testers when they recieve the Beta shortly. Expect to get some news from the beta as soon as it happens, Sven should have slightly less to do now that the bulk of the work is done and more time for site updates.